Friday, August 12, 2011

I just got back from a few whirlwind days in Sin City. I was there primarily to attend a wedding (and a wonderful event it turned out to be), but also to grab a little rest and recreation with family and friends. Las Vegas might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I happen to love it.

Money, and lots of it, is the name of the game in Vegas, but curiously gambling seems to have taken a bit of a back seat. Casino-resorts must have to constantly come up with new and innovative ways to display all sorts of consumer goods, not in the least fine wines, as an irresistible means to separate visitors from their winnings, or more likely their hard-earned wages. When one thinks of Las Vegas there are a lot of things that spring to mind, but fine wine is probably not one of them. However, presumably most people are familiar with the gimmicky Wine Angels of Aureole, in the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino, who retrieve customer's wine selections from a 42 ft Lucite tower. Onda Ristorante and Wine Lounge, in The Mirage, impressively displays wine bottles in a back-lit, approx. 16 ft high wall of barrels at the entrance to the restaurant. It's very eye-catching, it had me making a detour, across the casino floor, away from the Dolphin Habitat where I had been heading with my nieces OTW. I'm easily distracted, what can I say?

I didn't actually drink much vino on this trip as my partner in wine-crime, Vinomaker, decided to stay at home with the Vinodogs. At the wedding reception, held at Bouchon in The Venetian, I had an okay glass of Sancere and a passable domestic Merlot, but that was it.

6 comments:

I luuuurve Las Vegas and celebrated my 60th (and completion of Route 66) there - at Gallagher's, New York New York, with one of the best (and biggest) steaks I have ever eaten and nearly as good as the ones at The Hargreaves Arms in Laneshawbridge (dec'd). Oh, and a huge cigar too; I felt like a real hoodlum!

Affer: Had a fantastic flat iron steak at Bouchon...resisted putting something akin to a dog turd in my mouth!

Ron: Watched my mother, AKA The Roulette Queen, rapidly lose my and Thud's donation to The Venetian...that was as close to gambling as I got this trip. There are some smaller, dive casinos just off the strip that still concentrate on gaming, but the mega hotel/resorts are overwhelmingly monuments to consumerism.